Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.
[As a true piece of folklore there is no exact 'true' version of this story. As part of a brilliant project in celebration of the Ditsum Plums, found in Dittisham (Ditsum!), a conglomerate version of the story, collected from local people and including many different permutations, was produced with help from the Local Heritage Initiative. I have permission to reproduce the story here...
About 1 or 2 hundred years ago a ship was sailing from Germany (or possibly Chilli) past the South Devon coast with a big cargo of prunes. Now here the story becomes even more vague... In perhaps the most unremantic version of the story the boat put into shore and the prunes where traded with the locals, who planted the stones, and hey presto! Plums!
However, all other versions include the presence of a mighty storm... In the most compassionate version of the story the crew and boat survived, but only just... They put into port for repairs, and only had prunes to pay with. Prunes = plums!
The last two versions involve a tragic wrecking! In one the brave Ditsum villagers rescue the hapless sailors and get in return a crate of Prunes. There is just the slightest possibility they did not first seek permision to use this cargo from the half drowned men...
In the final version the sailors all die, drowned in the mighty waves of the storm. Nothing is left of the wreck but a single crate, that with a combination of tides, luck and providence, washed up the Dart to Ditsum quay...
The stones where planted and from them grew the plums, which where grafted and propigated till all the village was covered with a rich orchard of Ditsum Plums.
There are three varieties - one plum 'the Dittisham Ploughman' and two Damson varieties - Dittisham Damson and Dittisham Black.
My thanks to the community of 'Ditsum', and the compilers of The Plum Project Book for this brilliant story.]
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